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Targeted Attacks Rise Significantly

Targeted attacks have increased significantly since they were first discovered five years ago, according to the latest MessageLabs Intelligence security, storage and systems management solutions provider Symantec (www.symantec.com).

According to the analysis presented in the October 2010, have increased attacks directed from one to two attacks per week in 2005-77 attacks per day in October 2010.

“Although by nature targeted emails are sent in small volumes, which are one of the most harmful types of malicious attacks,” said senior analyst Paul Wood MessageLabs Intelligence in a statement. “We have seen a steady stream of attacks over the past six months with the specific type of organization change on a monthly basis and the anticipated number of users increasing every month. Although the number of attack exploits being deployed has decreased only slightly, number of attacks used by each farm has increased. ”

Targeted attacks for the first time, the most severely beaten by lower this month, which increased from a monthly average constant-half-percent of all attacks in the past two years to a quarter of all attacks October.

Usually, between 200 and 300 organizations from various industries are targeted each month. In October, an average of 5.4 users were attacked within each organization – these same individuals tend to be oriented in time, but using different methods of exploitation.

In October, the number of targeted attacks aimed at retailers rose well above the monthly average of 1 in 1.26 million, increasing the likelihood of an attack by a factor of almost 6.3 times. Moreover, the number of attacks against the retail sector rose to 516 in the last month, compared to only seven attacks per month during most of 2010, the first time the retail sector has been the focus of a campaign of attack directed at recent years.

“Of the 516 attacks, only six organizations were the objectives, but two of them were aimed primarily at one of which was the target of 63 percent of the 516 attacks,” Wood said in a statement. “The attacks of” spear phishing, “released in three waves each week apart, using social engineering techniques to distribute unsolicited email legitimate aspect of human resources and IT personnel in a particular organization, but actually contains attachments malicious. ”

Another trend identified in the report of MessageLabs is a drop in the overall relationship of new spam messages in the traffic of unknown 87.5 percent, down 4.2 percentage points since September. Furthermore, 23 percent of malware in emails contained links to malicious Web sites in October, an increase of 15.5 percentage points since September.

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